‘Angry’ ex-Man Utd star reveals Sancho, Pogba were ‘always late’

Former Manchester United midfielder Nemanja Matic has revealed that players were “always late” to training while he was at Old Trafford.

The Red Devils spent around £40m to sign Matic from Premier League rivals Chelsea in 2017.

Matic was a regular at Man Utd over five seasons as he made 189 appearances across all competitions. He worked with Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ralf Rangnick before Erik ten Hag arrived in 2022.

There is an issue with player power at Old Trafford and a group of Man Utd’s stars are reportedly turning on Ten Hag following their miserable start to the season.

Ten Hag has had several off-field issues to deal with while he’s been Man Utd’s manager. He opted to offload Cristiano Ronaldo during his debut season and he has since butted heads with Jadon Sancho, who accused the Dutchman of making him a “scapegoat”.

Sancho has failed to live up to expectations at Old Trafford following his £73m move. It has previously been suggested that the winger has an issue with “timekeeping” and Matic has now revealed that he (and Paul Pogba, unsurprisingly) were “always late” to training.

“At Chelsea, players acted professionally, they were punctual and were never late for training but at United, it happened almost every day,” Matic said in an interview with YuPlanet.

“Among the players who would always be late were Paul Pogba and Jadon Sancho and a couple of other players. The rest of us who were always on time were angry so we decided to form a kind of an internal disciplinary committee with me serving as its president.

“I put a sheet of paper up on the wall where I documented the names of individuals arriving late. During one particular season, we collected around £75,000 in fines. We had planned to use the money to throw a party in London but we didn’t due to the Covid outbreak.”

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Earlier this week, a report from Sky Sports’ Kaveh Solhekol revealed Man Utd’s players are “unhappy at how Sancho has been treated”.

“A few of the players are also unhappy at how Jadon Sancho has been treated,” Solhekol said on Sky Sports.

“He’s got people in the dressing room who are close to him and he’s been totally frozen out because he’s refused to apologise to Erik ten Hag.

“He’s training with the kids and he’s eating on his own. Quite a few of the players feel like that has gone too far. There’s always unhappy people in a dressing room, but when you’re losing games, there are even more of them.”